The Daily Goodbye

Happy Labor Day, workers of the world, and all those who toil for a medium of exchange.

Robert Spinrad, director of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center when the technology that led directly to the modern personal computer, the ethernet local area network and the laser printer was developed, has died.

Some of us (ahem) have trouble keeping up with American nonfiction and fiction, much producing new works of creativity. However, no such problem seems to have hampered Keith Waterhouse who produced 16 novels, including the spectacularly successful Billy Liar (1959), which became a play, film and musical. He died Sept. 4 at age 80.

A meditation from Nigeria on the issue of talking and writing about the negative aspects of a person's life in obituaries.

Founder of The Ecologist magazine and one of the founders of the Greens political party, Edward Goldsmith tried to live his beliefs of self-sustaining, environmentally conscious lifestyles. Never mind those who fled his composting toilet.

Malcolm Wilkey had a singular career as an American jurist, investigating check-kiting in the U.S. House of Representatives bank, working to enforce a landmark U.S. Supreme Court order on school desegregation, and on cases related to Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. He died in Santiago, Chile.

Sometimes it takes a weekend to catch up, and last night, paging through Friday's paper, I came across this thoughtful essay on grief by a Washington Post editor, Tracy Grant. It's worth reading.

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